Wednesday, September 14, 2011

We all do it now and again don't we. The old I'm sorry "I've been neglecting my blog" thing. Well, I'm not really, these things happen. I've been really busy, that's why. And frankly there's been fuck all to write about.

And what is going on with Sanjana and Indi? I'd consider them both as friends, of me that is, not of each other, but it appears that Sanjana is blurring boundaries between personal and professional.

Sanjana, if you read this, for what it's worth I reckon you need to take your issues with Indi onto a platform that's separated from Groundviews and the CPA. It's just my humble O, but I think you're not doing anyone any favours at the moment. But I'm no TED Fellow, so what do I know anyhow?

I frequently disagree with Indi's opinions and politics, but I think he's an honest and open sort of chap and wears his heart on his sleeve blog multitude of social media platforms.

This post of his got me thinking a bit. I love the convenience of tri shaws, the jump on and jump off thing and the fact that they're usually easy to find. But they're supposed to be kind of street transport aren't they? There's something going seriously wrong when the average tuk tuk costs so much more than calling a 588 or 688 cab. That just doesn't make sense. It's like a two star hotel charging more than a five star hotel because it's worse.

My consumerism fast has reached its halfway point and is proving to be more interesting than I'd expected. I've been good, hovering around the excellent point, with the only exception being the purchase of a self help book called "how to get a grip" on the Kindle, yes seriously. I pondered on the purchase for a bit, then went ahead, figuring that it was good for the mind and therefore excusable.

I started reading it immediately and currently think it was one of the best five of the Queen's pounds that I've ever spent. Though I can't actually remember how much it costed, so the figure might change. I think you know what I mean though.

The lack of shopping has meant that I've been doing a few other things when normally I'd have gone for a browse around the shops. More drum practice, more reading and more enjoying without yearning for things I don't have. Do you know the only thing I've struggled with? It's been not being able to buy the Foster the People album. I've been listening to it online a lot and would love it for the car, but no, that will have to wait another couple of weeks.

Oooh I've been reading and learning about marketing too. That's proper marketing, not the buying meat and vegetables at Food City and moaning about the price of American cheese thing. You probably know all about marketing. I don't and am finding the whole subject fascinating. I'm seeing a world of opportunity in which to go out and implement my new found knowledge.

Things with my Dad are progressing slowly and positively. He's just begun the third cycle of chemo and all the results are looking good so far. It is slow and it is painful, mostly for him, but we're getting there.

Here in Londinium the weather's turning as Autumn kicks in. Random days of good weather and sunshine interspersed with grey wet stuff are the norm, but there is no norm. I almost wore my Timberland boots the other day, then realised that the best attire was the light trainers and T shirt that I'd gone with. That's how mad and bad it's been.

My current choice of fiction is Mr Ondaatje senior's latest offering, entitled "The Cat's Table". It's about a boy's sea voyage from Sri Lanka to England in the 1950s and so far I like it a lot. I struggled with Anil's Ghost and never really got in the flow with Running in the Family, but this has affected me differently. Fucked if I know why, just saying. So far there's not a single cat in sight. Be warned if you're cat lover and buy it expecting to read about the feline things building furniture.

That's about it really. What have you been up to? Or, as I've heard these youngsters say; WUUT?

3 comments:

Since you mentioned Chilis: We used to have a percentage based system, but Indi reckoned that it was harder to follow, so we switched having 1-5 instead.

We calculate popularity using this formula:

Post Buzz =(No. of tweets / Max tweets for a single post in the last 24 hours) +(No. of FB likes and shares / Max) + (No. of clicks / Total no. of clicks)

Due to it being possible to use "click buying" on Facebook (through ads and whatever), we have weighted the factors as follows:

35% for Twitter, 20% for Facebook and 45% for clicks off Kottu itself (We track IP addresses to prevent fraud.)

Then begins the hazy bit. We multiply the floating point number that is your popularity by 100, to get a percentage. If this percentage is less than or equal to 1, you get 1 chili. Between 1% and 15%, you get 2 chilis. Between 15% - 35%, 3 chilis, and between 35% - 55%, you get 4 chilis. To get 5 chilis, you must get more than 55%, and only 7 posts have achieved this thus far (and this was before we reduced the Twitter and FB weights.

Indi and I have tried to keep the process of the new Kottu as open as possible (we even released the source code under the Affero GPL), but we're kinda late with the documentation. Must write it down when I get the time. :)

Hey, those trishaws with fare-meters are pretty good. I went from Union place to Bamba the other day for just Rs. 120. A normal trishaw would have charged me anything from Rs. 200 to Rs. 350 depending on it's driver's mood.